Pia Malone
style]] Name: Pia Malone Gender: Female Age: 18 School: Whittree Secondary Hobbies and Interests: Professional wrestling, feminist activism, baking Appearance: Pia is a short, scrappy girl, standing at 5’1” and weighing 140 pounds. Most of her weight is muscle, and she has a toned stomach, arms, and thighs. She has a rather flat chest, but curvy hips and a round bottom. Her skin is fair, and she has an abundance of freckles across her face, neck, and shoulders. Her facial features could be described as pixie-like, with large hazel eyes and a small nose and mouth. Pia’s naturally ginger hair is dyed bubblegum pink, and falls just past her shoulder blades, usually tousled and held back with a cloth headband. Pia is fond of menswear in her everyday wardrobe, usually wearing oversized sweaters and fitted pants, or a simple tank top and sophie shorts. She occasionally mixes more girlish pieces in, such as a nice blouse or patterned leggings and a skirt. She has a navel piercing, wearing a silver ring with a dragonfly charm. She has a habit of wearing only one pair of tennis shoes until they are worn out, and generally only wears that pair of shoes on a day-to-day basis. On casting day, Pia was wearing a black fitted tuxedo-style vest over a white button-down shirt, dark blue skinny jeans, and her worn-down tennis shoes. Her hair was held back with a faux-denim cloth headband. Biography: Pia was born on December 4, 2002 to Ricky and June Malone, a couple who joint-owned a used car lot in Hoboken, New Jersey. Pia was an active child from the very start, and June often mentions how she had to chase Pia around the house even before she could walk. During her early childhood, Pia’s outgoing nature helped her to get along fairly easily with most other kids. She was a very physical playmate, however, and her penchant for roughhousing was sometimes taken too far and ended up with someone getting scraped or bruised and Pia’s parents having to issue apologies. By around age eight, Pia’s reputation as a tomboy was firmly cemented, and she had few female friends throughout elementary school. When Pia was in fifth grade, business to the car lot faltered and the family began to struggle financially. Ricky and June were stressed by the tightness of money, and they often snapped at each other or at Pia. Pia, not having an outlet for her stress at home, started acting out at school, getting into scuffles with other kids. When she was suspended for starting a fight and blackening the eye of a girl who teased her, Pia’s parents decided that they all needed a change. They opted to sell the car lot and move to Whittree, Oklahoma, where June’s brother, Adrian Langston, owned a small coffee shop and bakery. While June went to work in the coffee shop, Ricky struggled with finding a job for nearly a year before finding an offer as a traveling salesman. The pay was decent, but he was often away from home, leaving Adrian as Pia’s main father figure from the time she was ten years old. Pia quickly grew very attached to her uncle and enjoyed helping him out in the bakery, where he eventually taught her how to bake the pastries he sold. Starting fresh in middle school and having her baking hobby to immerse her helped Pia to be more constructive, but her boundless energy still sometimes got her in trouble, talking out of turn in class or scuffling with kids who joked about her “Joisey” accent. She went through several sports, which served to be good outlets but never held her interest. When Pia was thirteen, Adrian took her to see a wrestling match a few towns over. Pia was entranced by the choreography of the fight and the larger-than-life personas of the wrestlers, and she knew that she had found her great interest. As soon as they got home, she begged her mom to let her take classes and learn how to wrestle properly. June was reluctant, owing to Pia’s small stature and the worry that knowing how to properly fight might just get her in more trouble at school, but she eventually gave in. Pia proved to be a dedicated learner and hard worker, and after a few months of classes decided that she wanted to wrestle as a career. Her parents assumed that it was just a phase, as all her other fascinations with sports had been, but Pia’s ambition held and only increased when her teacher suggested that she compete. When she entered high school, the wrestling team was the first extracurricular that she signed up for, and she has recently begun designing the persona she wants to use as a professional: The Pink Diamond. During her junior year, Pia began writing her own scripts for fights and sometimes carrying out the scripted matches with friends. She considered it a good beginning to properly learning the theatrical side of pro wrestling, but knew that amateur matches alone wouldn’t be good enough. She began researching local independent leagues where she could watch professionals and possibly find the opportunity to compete. Though most of her attempts were unsuccessful, Pia was able to get in touch with a female pro from the local circuit named Megan Carlsberg, known as “Mad Meg” in the ring. Through the course of several phone conversations, Pia informed Meg of her desire to break into the business and was advised to seek out a part-time job at one of the local rings. Additionally, Meg provided Pia with her personal phone number in case she needed any more advice, jokingly calling Pia her protégé. They formed a strong friendship over the course of the last year, with Meg giving Pia tips for training and writing her own scripts. When Pia’s parents found out that she was looking to break into a local league, they were forced to acknowledge that she was serious about pursuing pro wrestling as a career. She was allowed to watch the matches at the local ring, but was firmly denied permission to compete until she was out of high school. Recently, she and Meg were able to meet in person for the first time, with supervision from Pia’s parents, and they hit it off superbly. As Pia went through high school, she noticed how women in general and teenage girls especially were treated as weaker than men, and she herself was often the target of slurs and people questioning her femininity due to her interest in wrestling. This drove her to become involved in women’s rights activism, and while she has good intentions, she is often overzealous and sometimes downright obnoxious in her campaigning. Pia could be considered a casual fan of SOTF-TV, watching it when it’s on but not following closely. She does take issue with the way many female contestants are sexualized, and she makes a point of telling people so when the subject comes up. Overall, Pia is bright, energetic, and friendly, but she can be overbearing. She usually spends time with other athletes and people with similar interests, but she has been known to latch onto shyer kids and attempt to get them to branch out more. People who dislike her interest in wrestling and her over-enthusiastic feminism tend to avoid her if she doesn’t outright pick fights with them. After high school, she intends to get a job at one of the independent leagues and move onto professional wrestling from there, instead of pursuing a higher education. She hasn't yet told her parents about this, believing that they expect her to go to college and keep wrestling on the side, and would react badly. Advantages: Pia is an experienced fighter, and has good experience with taking down opponents who underestimate her because of her small size. She is determined and driven, and she is good at motivating and engaging potential friends. Disadvantages: Pia is used to fights that are either mediated by a referee or that she herself has scripted, and would have a difficult time in a no-holds-barred fight. Additionally, her tendency to pick fights and her aggressively feminist attitude could lose her potential allies and cause unnecessary conflict. Though she is quite fit, she is still very small and could be overcome by larger, stronger people. Designated Number: Team Silver Scorpions 2 (SS2). ---- Designated Weapon: Vektor SP1 Mentor Comment: "The Scorpions appear to be rife with actresses, which gives me hope for some more cloak-and-dagger type tactics among them. Miss Malone's aggression and dependency on a dream in which she grapples other humans in front of a crowd could lead to the creation of something amazing in SOTF history." Evaluations )]] Handled By: 'backslash '''Kills: 'Matthew Weiss, Riley Parker, Genevieve Cordova 'Killed By: 'Vahka Basayev 'Collected Weapons: '''Vektor SP1 (designated weapon, lost), Ruger Police Carbine 4 (from Paisley Hopkins, to Vahka Basayev) '''Allies: 'Paisley Hopkins, Matthew Weiss, Caroline Leveson 'Enemies: 'Matthew Weiss, Ramón Fuentes, Genevieve Cordova, Sarah Bourne, Ashley Namath 'Mid-game Evaluation: ' 'Post-Game Evaluation: ' '''Memorable Quotes: Other/Trivia *Pia is supposed to have a New Jersey accent, but her handler has no idea how to write one. Threads Below is a list of threads that contain Pia, in chronological order Sandbox: *Cubic Zirconia *Save Tonight *Rock On *The Fragrance of Dark Coffee SOTF-TV: *You Snooze, You Lose *Fear and Loathing in Tiki Land *CAVE CAVE DEUS VIDET *The Devil You Know *I Played it Out *The Nthn Wave *Up, M'lady-Pack Your Things, This Place Is Not Your Home Your Thoughts Whether you were a fellow handler in SOTF or just an avid reader of the site, we'd like to know what you thought about Pia. What did you like, or dislike, about the character? Let us know here! * liked Pia for the most part. Her interactions with Paisley are really well done, and her conflict around why she would choose to kill and who is interesting. The main thing in her story that bugs me is her 2nd kill, where the kill seems to come out of nowhere and doesn’t strongly influence events in the scene before or after it. -bacon *I actually had somewhat more mixed feelings towards Pia than I did backslash's other TV2 character, and it took me a little to figure out why. In Sandbox, Pia's posts tend to focus really heavily on what she's doing, but the whys and her internal state aren't explored a ton; in threads where both characters are doing this to some degree (as in her interactions with Dougie and Vahka) this can be fairly unobtrusive but also cedes spotlight to whoever's doing the more notable thing, and I'd argue that in these threads it's the boys, with Pia largely reacting. In bigger threads, she gets a little lost amidst the bustle of everything else. Fortunately, Pia's narrative quickly steps up come the actual game, and some of the more interesting elements of her concept that didn't have the opportunity to come into play in Sandbox get a full showing. I like that Pia tries to be tough, and I quite like that she's morally compromised in short order. Pia's desire to survive allows her to come to grips with the idea of playing, and to at various points actively pursue her survival not only in pragmatic fashion, but at the expense of others. That said, I do quibble to a degree with some elements of the start of this slide, particularly when it comes to Matt's death; I'm rarely a fan of the accidental kill, and in this case the scene seems to be building to Pia shooting Matt as a calculated action to benefit herself once he's beyond help; that it swerves into the more conventional and morally safe path is a bit of a disappointment, especially since everything that comes after could've unfolded roughly the same either way. In that respect, I actually think Riley's death did a lot to kickstart Pia's story and help her hit her stride, giving her that more intentional kill to push her into a more blatantly dubious position. This more knowingly violent face is the one Pia wears for the remainder of the game, and some of her best moments are due to it; her arguing with Paisley after the girl starts the chain of events culminating in Genni's death is good, with tension and cracks and a real feeling of pressure mounting between the two. That same mode persists in the encounter with Sarah and Corin, and leads to her disastrous firefight with Ashley (and another positive note here, in that I always enjoy it when a handler is willing to let their characters get into fights and take injuries not entirely related to their deaths, even if in this case Pia was rolled at the time). I do have some issues, though, with Pia's death. It's not necessarily the scene itself; I actually think the quiet tragedy of an unintentional injury leading to a knowing killing is strong (though I'm not totally sold on the specifics of the bear trap, it's a fairly minor point). I think what didn't quite work for me goes further back, and has to do with the fact that much of Vahka's relationship with Pia is established in between the lines, through extremely muted implication, insofar as it is established at all. I've mentioned this with regards to other TV2 characters displaying a similar issue, I think, but it feels like a story that we're missing some big parts of but that hasn't quite been keyed to that exclusion. There are layers of nuance I sort of get because I was familiar to a degree with the chat discussions of the love non-euclidean-object between Pia, Vahka, Regina, and Dougie, but for it to come into such prominence I think either a more direct breakdown of what exactly literally happened and when would've been nice, or, failing that, a little more concentrated focus on that lack of knowledge as an element and how it informs and plays into the read of the dynamic. As it is, it feels sorta like I missed a Sandbox thread somewhere, or maybe a meaty flashback. So this has gotten tangled, and I find (as with so many of these comments) that there are chunks of Pia's story I like better in retrospect/as part of a continuity than I did going post by post while following the game. I think Pia struggles when she's not taking the helm and getting to show her tough but not-totally-justified side, and when she's in situations where the reader is given the meaning of a situation but not the grounding to really feel that punch. On the other hand, Pia's at her best when she's in tense, rough situations, and when her story is diving unflinchingly into uncomfortable territory; these moments are interesting and powerful. - MurderWeasel Category:SOTF-TV Category:Characters